Maharashtra Final Year Exams 2020: Mumbai colleges reach out to third-party service providers for online exams

Mumbai colleges reach out to third-party providers to conduct the online final year exams. Read further to know more.

After the Supreme Court's order to Universities across the country to conduct the final year exams 2020 by end of September, Mumbai colleges have started reaching out to third-party service providers to conduct the online exams. Many autonomous colleges in the state are considering using Google forms to deliver the test.

Colleges in the state have contacted the service providers a day after Mumbai University has released its final year exam format.  Academicians have however questioned the viability of using objective-based online tests to evaluate students in a certifying exam. While speaking to a media house, Neel Helekar, a management council member said, “This is the first time we have decided to decentralise the final-year university exams and will be using the cluster system.”

The management council is further thinking of having a centralised question bank for every subject where all questions of a similar level of difficulty will be prepared. Some of the autonomous colleges in the state are also planning to use online-proctoring software to supervise exams as well. 

Meanwhile, after the state governor’s suggestion to conduct the exams in a simple manner, Maharashtra Students Union (MASU) has also demanded to conduct the final year exams in a simplified manner. The Union has also written a letter of suggestion and recommendations to the Chief Minister Uddhav Bal Thackeray in this regard.

As per the MASU, the exams shall be conducted online or in hybrid mode in which the question papers can be sent through email or WhatsApp and students can solve them from home. The exam syllabus up to the month of March shall be taken into consideration. The letter further states that the examination mode shall be the same for all the 13 non-agricultural public universities and ATKT and backlog students shall be immediately granted relief as for them no concrete decision made by the state.

Meanwhile, Minister for Higher Education, Maharashtra, Uday Samant has informed that the state will be seeking an extension to complete the final year exam process by October 31, 2020. He said the state government will request the University Grants Commission, UGC to extend the existing deadline for conducting the examinations from September end to October end. He also said that the toughness of the exams would also be reduced.

Read More:

• Maharashtra government drops 70:30 admission norms in medical colleges
• Maharashtra Governor asks Universities to complete final year examination process by October 31
• Maharashtra Final Year Exams 2020: Maharashtra University exams not to be held in September; says Uday Samant